Mark Zuckerberg Plans to Have 5 Billion Facebook Users By 2030

By 2030, Zuckerberg said at an event this week that he plans for 5 billion people to be on Facebook—more than half of the estimated global population by that time.

Currently, Facebook has 1.59 billion monthly active users.

“We want to finish connecting everyone, we’re going to do it in partnership with governments and different companies all over the world,” Zuckerberg said at an event commemorating the company’s 12th anniversary, according to USA Today. He indicated that Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, which includes using solar-powered drones to expand internet access around the world, would play an important role in the platform’s expansion.“It’s solar-powered, and it’ll just fly around a city and beam down Internet access,” he said. “It’s, like, pretty crazy, right?”

Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for Internet.org stands in contrast to the controversy that the initiative has bred around the world. In India, net neutrality advocates have rallied against Facebook’s Free Basics, a form of free internet access with selected services. It was banned across the country in December to give the Indian telecom regulator time to evaluate whether the service violates net neutrality.